Integrating ERP and BI solutions – the perfect 'next step'

This week, the ERP channel speaks to Paul Goepfert, Pronto Software’s Marketing Manager, about the uptake of integrated enterprise resource planning (ERP) and business intelligence (BI) and how businesses should think about integrating these solutions in future.

Integrating ERP and BI solutions – the perfect ‘next step’ for companies seeking to manage their operations more effectively…

Australian enterprise resource planning (ERP) and business intelligence (BI) provider, Pronto Software, has seen its business in its home market grow by 20 percent in the current financial year, with solid take-up by Australian companies of its out-of-the-box, integrated ERP and BI solution designed specifically for mid-market companies.

According to Pronto Australia’s Paul Goepfert, the integrated Pronto Xi solution, with IBM’s Cognos BI, is in demand from cost-conscious Australian mid-market companies, because the integration of ERP and BI in one solution eliminates “tens of thousands of dollars” in costs traditionally associated with the deployment and implementation of separate ERP and BI software.

Goepfert also says that Pronto Xi with BI features “one important difference which sets it apart from our competitor solutions and affords significant benefits to a mid-market company wanting to empower staff at all levels with the BI tools.”

“Traditionally BI has only been made available to a few people in a business, with only senior managers and key people at higher levels of an enterprise able to access and analyse the data. Pronto has responded to market demand and the trend in many businesses today where there is a need for staff at all levels to have full access to BI, and to be able to extract and analyse information to help them make decisions which potentially give the business a competitive edge.”

To reinforce the point about costs, which he says are “enormous” when non-integrated ERP and BI solutions have to be implemented, Goepfert says historically that often meant a company had to employ consultants and contractors, costing tens of thousands of dollars, to come into the business to extract the information from ERP and bring it into BI before the data could be analysed.

“All that extra cost can be reduced if companies do their research. An integrated solution should make the process very simple – even without ERP expertise – to extract the information from ERP, analyse the data and apply it to your business decision-making in the form of BI.

“At Pronto, we listen very carefully to what our Australian clients want and with our integrated ERP/BI Pronto Xi solution, we have developed a cost-effective, out-of-the-box solution which can be adapted to the specific needs of mid-market businesses,” he says.

One Pronto Software customer using the latest solution from the company is Retail Prodigy Group, a Nike Australia retail partner in Australia. Retail Prodigy Group signed a deal to deploy the Xi ERP/BI integrated solution across several Nike stores in Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland and is already seeing the solution delivery business results.